Open endedness of Struggles

According to Foucault:

a) Human beings by their very 'nature' are freedom seeking animals b) And there is fundamental ambivalence inherent within freedom so that it is the means of governance and intransigence at the same time c) Thus the possibility of freedom as intrasigence/struggle is never foreclosed. As Foucault puts it:

"There is no question that the appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and "psychic hermaphrodism" made possible a strong advance of social controls into (the) area of "perversity"; but it also made possible the formation of a "reverse" discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or "naturality" be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified. There is not, on the one side, a discourse of power, and opposite it, another discourse that runs counter to it. Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy". (HS pp. 101-102).

The emergence of 'reverse' discourse within the same field of power relations was possible because of this double character of freedom. Foucault clearly demonstrates the same phenomenon of discourse-counter discourse, strategy - counter strategy through the example of 'investment' of power in body. While on the one hand power controls the body through "stimulation" (PK p. 57), through increasing the capability through increasing the possibility of diversity, perversions etc (HS pp. 47-48), but on the other hand this same strategy of control is capable of giving rise to and providing the space for the revolt of body against the controlling power and controlling strategy. As Foucault puts it:

"As always with relations of power, one is faced with complex phenomena which don't obey the Hegelian form of the dialectic. Mastery and awareness of one's own body can be acquired only through the effect of an investment of power in the body: gymnastics, exercises, muscle-building, nudism, glorification of the body as beautiful. All of this belongs to the pathway leading to the desire of one's own body, by way of the insistent, persistent, meticulous work of power on the bodies of children or soldiers, the healthy bodies. But once power produces this effect, there inevitably emerge the responding claims and affirmations, those of one's own body against power, of health against the economic system, of pleasure against the moral norms of sexuality, marriage, decency. (Suddenly, what had made power strong becomes used to attack it). Power, after investing itself in the body, finds itself exposed to a counterattack in the same body. Do you recall the panic of the institutions of the social body, the doctors and politicians, at the idea of non-legalised cohabitation (I'union libre) or free abortion? But the impression that power weakens and vacillates here is in fact mistaken; power can retreat here, re-organise its forces, invest itself elsewhere . . . and so the battle continues" (PK p. 56).

Sartre/Foucault relation

The following quote, in my opinion, should provide basis for understanding Fouault's realtion with Sartre which is indeed very deep and essential for understanding Foucault (in both what he takes from Sartre and what he rejects in him).:

"I think that from the theoretical point of view, Sartre avoids the idea of the self as something that is given to us, but through the moral notion of authenticity, he turns back to the idea of that we have to be ourselves - to be truly our true self. I think that the only acceptable practical consequences of what Sartre has said is to link this theoretical insight to the practice of creativity - and not that of authenticity. From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequences of what Sartre has said is to link his theoretical insight to the practical creativity - and not that of authenticity. From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art. In his analyses of Baudelaire, Flaubert, and so on, it is interesting to see that Sartre refers the work of creation to a certain relation to oneself - the author to himself- which has the form of authenticity or inauthenticity. I would like to say exactly the contrary: we should not have to refer the creative activity of somebody to the kind of relation he has to himself, but should relate the kind of relation one has to oneself to a creative activity" (Essential works, vol. i p. 262.)

The above formulation should provide in my opinion key to any endeavour to understand the relation of Foucault and Sartre. For the background of this one might like to have a look at David Macey's highly recommended, The lives of Michel Foucault.

The purpose of critique

The purpose of critique is "not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest" (PPC, p. 155).

Through the problematisation of existing reality "one can no longer think things as one formerly thought of them", and "transformation become both very difficult, and quite possible". Thus "the work of deep transformation can only be carried out in a free atmosphere, one constantly agitated by a permanent criticism" (ibid. p. 155).

Thus permanent questioning is the condition of the real transformation of a society. It is directed towards the "contemporary limits of the necessary that is, towards what is not or is no longer indispensable for the constitution of ourselves as autonomous subjects" (FR p. 43).

In a sense problematisation is the result of permanent questioning. The problematisation presupposes a certain dissatisfaction with the present, with the present as a whole or with certain elements that constitute the present " . . . for a domain of action, a behaviour, to enter the field of thought, it is necessary for a certain member of factors to have made it uncertain, to have provoked certain member of difficulties around it" (ibid. p. 388). Again such a problematisation is the condition of real transformation in any society.

questioning and problematisation

Two strands of questioning may be discerned in Foucault:

On the one hand questioning is the normal way of human beings. If the world is permanently a dangerous place in the sense that every web of relations poses threats to human freedom, no society can be conceived in which the need for questioning disappears. In this sense questioning may be described as a permanent human condition.

On the other hand this general critique must take the form of specific and concrete questioning in the sense that it must be levelled against and directed towards the current power/truth/individuality regime. Finally this questioning is to be directed towards those aspects of the present that are crucial in the context of the realisation or hindrance of freedom.

In this context the purpose of permanent questioning is to problematise the present. Permanent questioning, is refusal to treat existing reality as the permanent arrangement of things: "we must free ourselves from the sacralisation of the social as the only reality and stop regarding as superfluous something so essential as thought. Thought exists independently of systems and structures of discourse. It is something that is often hidden that which always animates everyday behaviour" (PPC pp. 154-155).

Struggle against Capitalist Governance

Foucauldian struggles are struggles against capitalist governmental rationality. They question the way people are 'lead' and the 'reasons' on the basis of which they are 'lead' in modern capitalist societies. Foucault defines 'government' as "the set of institutions and practices by which people are 'lead' from administration to education, etc" (RM p. 176).

In this sense Foucauldian struggles are struggles against capitalist governmental rationality. They are struggles against capitalist form of governance, which 'lead' people by combining the principle of utility maximisation and 'docility' as the function of government. They are struggles against the form of governance, which demand subjection of people in the name of their salvation in this world. They are struggles against the forms of governance that demand the subjection of population in the name of life enhancement.

Thus Foucauldian struggles are not just struggles against the capitalist state but they are struggles against the rationality upon which the hegemony of the capitalist state rests. And to the extent that this rationality permeates the whole web of relations in capitalist order, struggles against this form of rationality are struggles against capitalist order as such.

the purpose of Foucault's analysis of capitalist rationality

Following quotes from Foucault are, in my opinion, key for understanding the purpose of his analysis of capitalist rationality:

“. . . those who resist or rebel against a form of power cannot merely be content to denounce violence or criticize an institution. Nor is it enough to cast the blame on reason in general. What has to be questioned is the form of rationality at stake. The criticism of power wielded over the mentally sick or mad cannot be restricted to psychiatric institutions; nor can those questioning the power to punish be content with denouncing prisons as total institution. The question is: How to avoid other institutions, with the same objectives and the same effects, from taking their stead.” ("Omnes et Singulatim" in Michel Foucault, Essential Works, vol. 3, pp. 324-325).

“Very significantly, political criticism has reproached the state with simultaneously a factor for individualization and a totalitarian principle. Just to look at nascent state rationality, just to see what its first policing project was, makes it clear that, right from the start, the state is both individualizing and totalitarian. Opposing the individual and his interests to it is just as hazardous as opposing it with the community and its requirements.

Political rationality has grown and imposed itself all throughout the history of Western societies. It first took its stand on the idea of pastoral power, then on that of reason of state. Its inevitable effects are both individualization and totalization. Liberation can come only from attacking not just one of these two effects but political rationality’s very roots.” (ibid. p. 325).

The quotes speak for themselves and need no elaboration. However few minor observations are in order:

i)It seems to me that by “Nor is it enough to cast the blame on reason in general” Foucault might have early Frankfurt School, specially criticism by Adorno and Horkheimer in mind. Incidentally it also provides Foucault’s response to Habermas who accuses him of working with a totalising critique of reason.

ii)I was wondering whether “totalization” and “totalitarian” might be best rendered as ‘socialisation’. I should check the original I guess.

Modernity and Maturity

Modernity consists in the great transformation where by Western humanity abandoned its belief in the normative authority of God over human affairs. This negative achievement of Enlightenment and modernism is the basis of any subsequent development in this way but this negative "achievement" cannot be taken as self-sufficient in itself. The negative "achievement" of Enlightenment can be lost by creating new gods, creating new authorities in the place of God.

According to Foucault Kant did exactly this. He rejected the normative power of God over human beings but replaced it with a new ‘god’, the transcendental subjectivity or ‘good will’. Thus according to Foucault Kant was modern but not sufficiently mature because “He historically faced the loss of the grounding of human action in metaphysical reality, but he sought to reground it in epistemology” (Foucault: A Critical Reader p. 118).

The distinguishing characteristic of Foucault’s thought is precisely this fact that he takes Enlightenment’s quest for the rejection of any external normative authority over human affairs seriously and espouses it with all its logical entailments: “there (is) one thing that distinguishes Foucault’s thought from that of some others, it is the firm resolve not to serve a dual function, not to reduplicate our illusions, not to prove that what is, ought to be (and) has every reason to be. The rarest of phenomenon, here is a philosophy without a happy end. Not that it ends badly: nothing can “end”, since there is no end point any more than there is an origin. Foucault’s originality among the great thinkers of our century (lies) in his refusal to convert our finitude into the basis for new certainties” ("The Final Foucault and His Ethics" in foucault and his interlocutors p. 229).
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related post, Kant and Foucault

Christian notion of morality and its secular counterpart(s)

Foucault considers the Christian notion of morality as the negation of the concept of freedom. It is seen as a form of subjugation that was introduced in Western culture by Christianity.

Before the advent of Christianity, in the European cultures of Rome and Greece morality meant “ a personal work of art, even if it obeyed certain collective cannons”, but “with Christianity, there occurred a slow, gradual shift in relation to the moralities of Antiquity . . . .” Foucault describes this slow gradual shift in the following words: " . . . in Christianity, with the religion of the text, the idea of the will of God, the principle of obedience, morality took in increasingly the form of a code of rules”. The change from antiquity to Christianity consisted in a change from “a personal ethics to a morality as obedience to a system of rules” (PPC p. 49).

The notion of morality is based on the notion of obligation as moral compulsion for every one in all manageable circumstances and it also provides the means through which singularity is imposed on diversity. It is also a device which connect different compartments of an individual's life and different strata of a society under the same umbrella of morality.

Although Enlightenment rejected the idea of obedience to rules promulgated by or in the name of God, it puts forth its own idea of obedience to rules promulgated by or in the name of transcendental subjectivity, man.

Foucault considers this conception of morality as obedience to rules made by men as the reassertion of the Christian idea of morality in another guise. This is because the idea of a men made code of moral rules presupposes and requires that we attribute the idea of ‘absolute will’ to man.

Thus although Enlightenment rejected the idea of obedience to the absolute will in the name of God, by attributing ‘absolute will’ to man, it internalised the concept of the Christian God, by locating Him within each man as his conscience to which he must submit in his quest for autonomy.

The Foucauldian objection to the modern conception of morality is similar to the one made against Luther by Marx. Marx commenting on the change effected by Luther in European culture, writes: “Luther, without question, defeated servitude through devotion, but only by substituting servitude through conviction. He shattered the faith in authority, by restoring the authority of faith . . . He freed man from external religiosity by making religiosity the innermost essence of the man” (“Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” in T. B. Bottomore ed. (1963) Karl Marx: Early Writings London,p. 53).
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related post

human beings as animals committed to the project of freedom

Foucault presupposes a fundamental ontology, which conceives human beings as animals committed to the project of freedom: "Man is an animal of experience, he is involved ad infinitum within a process that, by defining a field of objects, at the same time changes him, deforms him and transfigures him as a subject" (RM p. 124 emphasis retained).

This is how human beings have been throughout their history: ". . . in the course of their history, men had never ceased constructing themselves, that is, to shift continuously the level of their subjectivity, to constitute themselves in an infinite and multiple series of different subjectivities that would never reach an end and would never place us in the presence of something that would be 'man' (ibid. pp. 123-124).

Now if freedom is part and parcel of human societies, struggles too would seem to be a constant feature of human societies. We have seen (here) in detail how freedom can be a mean of governance.

In that same discussion we had also alluded to the 'intransigence' of freedom and had opined that Foucault considers 'intransigence' too as a basic characteristic of freedom. We can take this 'intransigence' of freedom as implying the possibility of struggle.

Thus what Foucault is saying is that although freedom can be a means of governance, the possibility of governance/management in itself implies the possibility of 'intransigence' and hence of struggle against (any) subjectivity or objectivity. Thus the possibility of struggle is never completely foreclosed.

The level of domination in any society is determined by the sum total of relations their internal dynamics and their overall balance and the same determines the level of the possibility of resistance in any society.

alternative(s)

Foucault has often been accused of not providing any definitive alternative to capitalism. The objection, is off the mark. The reason being that any alternative put in advance would necessarily be limiting vis a vis the field of possibility inherent in the present. Thus according to Foucault an alternative must evolve through struggles and should not be specified in advance.

And this is how alternatives infact manifest themselves in history and to disregard this mechanism is mere delusion.

The former we can name "thick conception of alternative" while the latter as the thin conception. Thus the refusal to put forward any definitive alternative is not accidental; it is a necessary entailment of commitment to freedom.

Thus we can not look forward to any ready made and definitive alternatives due to our commitment to freedom " . . . the question I am trying to ask are not determined by a pre-established political outlook and do not tend toward the realisation of some definite political project" (FR. p. 375).

Capitalism and calss domination

Foucault rejects the concept of class domination as a viable term for explaining capitalism. The hegemony of capital does not consist (primarily) in the hegemony of a class, it is fundamentally the hegemony of a particular rationality.

The bourgeois class might have been the bearer of this rationality but this does not amount to saying that the hegemony of capital is the hegemony of bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie became the dominant class because they were the first to subject themselves to capitalist rationality. Historically the bourgeoisie were the first 'subject' of capital.

Later on other classes were subjected to the same rationality. In this sense capitalism is an incorporatist system. It is not exclusionist in the sense carried with it by the concept of class domination.

What Foucault wrote about the deployment of sexuality (which was the integral part of the development of bio politics) makes it clear that he has no purchase for the concept of class domination:

"If one writes the history of sexuality in terms of repression, relating this repression to the utilisation of labour capacity, one must suppose that sexual controls were the more intense and meticulous as they were directed at the poorer classes; one has to assume that they followed the path of greatest domination and the most systematic exploitation: the young adult man, possessing nothing more than his life force, had to be the primary target of a subjugation destined to shift the energy available for useless pleasure toward compulsory labour. But this does not appear to be the way things actually happened. On the contrary, the most rigorous techniques were formed and, more particularly, applied first, with the greatest intensity, in the economically privileged and politically dominant classes. The direction of consciences, self-examination, the entire long elaboration of the transgressions of the flesh, and the scrupulous detection of concupiscence were all subtle procedures that could only have been accessible to small groups of people. It is true that the penitential method of Alfonso 'de' Ligouri and the rules recommended to the Methodists by Wesley ensured that these procedures would be more widely disseminated, after a fashion; but this was at the cost of a considerable simplification. The same can be said of the family as an agency of control and a point of sexual saturation: it was in the bourgeois or "aristocratic" family that the sexuality of children and adolescents was first problematised, and feminine sexuality medicalised; it was the first to be alerted to the potential pathology of sex, the urgent need to keep it under close watch and to devise a rational technology of correction. It was this family that first became a locus for the psychiatrization of sex. Surrendering to fears, creating remedies, appealing for rescue by learned techniques, generating countless discourses, it was the first to commit itself to sexual erethism. The bourgeoisie began by considering that its own sex was something important, a fragile treasure, a secret that had to be discovered at all costs. It is worth remembering that the first figure to be invested by the deployment of sexuality, one of the first to be "sexualised," was the "idle" woman. She inhabited the outer edge of the "world," in which she always had to appear as a value, and of the family, where she was assigned a new destiny charged with conjugal and parental obligations. Thus there emerged the "nervous" woman, the woman afflicted with "vapours"; in this figure, the hysterisation of woman found its anchorage point. As for the adolescent wasting his future substance in secret pleasures, the onanistic child who was of such concern to doctors and educators from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, this was not the child of the people, the future worker who had to be taught the disciplines of the body, but rather the schoolboy, the child surrounded by domestic servants, tutors, and governess, who was in danger of compromising not so much his physical strength as his intellectual capacity, his moral fiber, and the obligation to preserve a healthy line of descent for his family and his social class. For their part, the working classes managed for a long time to escape the deployment of "sexuality". On the other hand, it is unlikely that the Christian technology of the flesh ever had any importance for them. As for the mechanisms of sexualisation, these penetrated them slowly and apparently in three successive stages" (The History of Sexuality : An Introduction, pp. 120-121, emphasis provided).

Foucault, Marxism and economic determinism (1)

Since the economy is in the hand of the bourgeoisie, they must have political power too, and since political power is concentrated in the state, the state must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie too. The counter strategy runs almost on similar lines. The state must be captured by the proletariat so as to overthrow the bourgeoisie from the helm of economy and to establish the counter domination of proletariat on economy. The first ingredient of the argument is already rejected in terms of the rejection of economism. The second argument is rejected by Foucault on the basis of his rejection of the Marxist over emphasis on the state apparatus:

"… one cannot confine oneself to analysing the state apparatus alone if one wants to grasp the mechanisms of power in their detail and complexity. There is a sort of schematism that needs to be avoided here-and which incidentally is not to be found in Marx - that consists of locating power in the state apparatus, making this into the major, privileged capital and almost unique instrument of the power of one class over another. In reality, power in its exercise goes much further, passes through much finer channels, and is much more ambiguous . . . " (PK p. 72).

What is lacking in the standard Marxist analysis of capitalism is the concept of capitalist governmental rationality as the basis of state and hence unavailability of the crucial distinction between the narrow and broad senses of the state. .(to be continued)

continued from here

Foucault, Marxism and economic determinism

Foucault rejects economism or economic determinism as to be found in vulgar Marxism. This aspect is also related to the concept of ideology. The third reason for the rejection of ideology, which we didn’t mention before, makes this clear “ideology stands in a secondary position relative to some thing which functions as its infrastructure, as its material, economic determinant, etc” (FR, p. 60).

The rejection of economic determinism is related to the rejection of a basic distinction in Marxism between base and super structure. This distinction is used in Marxism “to propound the idea that the economic structure of society (the base) conditions the existence and forms of the state and social consciousness (the superstructure)” (The Dictionary of Marxist Thought, p. 42 emphasis removed).

In Foucault’s analysis of capitalism, the regime of accumulation of men (which corresponds to Marxism’s super structure) is the condition of the possibility of capitalism in general and the particular regimes of accumulation of men are necessary for the existence and continued sustenance of particular accumulation regimes beside that they are tied to each other in a conditioning-conditioned relationship.

Moreover a philosophy of relations like that of Foucault cannot subscribe to reductionism which is the hallmark of the base/superstructure distinction in vulgar Marxism. As Foucault puts it: “the reproduction of the relations of production is not the only function served by power. The system of domination and the circuits of exploitation certainly interact, intersect and support each other, but they do not coincide" (PK p. 72).

Foucault terms this view as the view of 'an economic functionality of power' (ibid. p. 88) and rejects. According to this view "power is conceived primarily in terms of the role it plays in the maintenance simultaneously of the relations of production and of a class domination which the development and specific forms of the forces of production have rendered possible. On this view then the historical raison detre of political power is to be found in the economy" (ibid. pp. 88-89). The missing link is the state. Political power must reside and concentrate primarily in the state . From this a whole argument for class domination is derived.(to be continued)

Foucauldian worldview

Foucauldian worldview is based on radicalization of the Enlightenment conception of the death of God. As Foucault himself confesses in one of his rare moments when he succumbs to the urge to present his worldview explicitly. I will present in following excerpts from his interview where he starts comparing his thought with that of Sartre (from Michel Foucault, by Eribon):

Q. What were Sartre’s interests as a philosopher?

A. Roughly, faced with a historical world that bourgeois tradition, no longer able to keep its bearings, wanted to consider as absurd. Sartre wanted to demonstrate that, on the contrary, there was meaning [sens] everywhere…

Q. When did you stop believing in “meaning”?

A. The break came the day that Lévi-Strauss demonstrated-about societies-and Lacan demonstrated-about the unconscious-that the “meaning” was probably only a sort of surface effect, a shimmer, a foam, and that what ran through us, underlay us, and was before us, what sustained us in time and space, was the system.

. . . Lacan’s importance comes from the fact that he showed how it is the structures, the very system of language, that speak through the patient’s discourse and the symptoms of his neurosis-not the subject . . . Before any human existence, there would already be a discursive knowledge, a system that we will rediscover.

Q. But then, who secretes this system?

A. What is this anonymous system without a subject, what thinks? The “I” has exploded-we see this in modern literature-this is the discovery of “there is”. There is one. In some ways, one comes back to the seventeenth-century point of view, with this difference: not setting man, but anonymous thought, knowledge without a subject, theory with no identity, in God’s place. (ibid. p. 161, emphasis added).

This is a sort of modified version of Hegelianism and strangely confirms
Foucault’s speculative fears about the return of Hegel.* Thought as the space in the context of which reality and its knowledge and its specific instances are drawn. Foucault's difference with Hegel is the same as that differentiates him from Heidegger.

While Hegel sees the formation of reality as a single totalizing process Foucault sees them as several processes, which are not connected in any positive sense but share only the commonality of being situated in the context of and emerging out of "anonymous thought" (as the condition of all possibility).

What Foucault rejects in Hegel is the what he rejects in Heidegger, the sameness of actual manifestations of the ‘one anonymous thought”. Thus, according to Foucault, it is wrong to think that “from a certain time on everyone would think in the same way in spite of surface differences, would say the same thing via polymorphous vocabulary, and would produce a sort of grand discourse which one could run through indifferently in all direction” (Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 148).

Thus though Foucault has a different conception of historical manifestation of anonymous thought and its ability of self activation, we are not far away from Hegelian Geist here.
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*“But truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us” (Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 235).

Questioning the "we"

Foucault rejects any normative powers to the existing web of relations. Thus struggles and practices, should not refer back to any unquestioned and unquestionable, 'we' (for example) and struggles should not purport to provide any definitive alternatives. Struggle is a practice that can have general implications for the reconstitution of present power relations and for the emergence of a new 'we'. However it should not provide any blue prints/utopias for such reconstruction and the new emerging "we" should have only aesthetic appeal but no moral/normative authority. Reflecting on Richard Rorty's objection that he does not refer to any 'we' Foucault doubts that at the time when he wrote MC there existed any 'we' for that practice to refer to:

" . . . I'm not sure that at the time when I wrote the history of madness, there was a preexisting and receptive "we" to which I would only have to refer in order to write my book, and of which this book would have been the spontaneous expression. Laing, Cooper, Basaglia, and I had no community, nor any relationship. But the problem posed itself to those who read us, as it also posed itself to some of us, of seeing if it was possible to establish a "we" on the basis of work that had been done, a "we" that would also be likely to form a community of action" (The Foucault Reader, p. 385).

The whole point of struggle is dissatisfaction with the existing reality, with the existing 'we'. Thus an existing reality, existing 'we' or any of its historical precursors can not be treated as having any normative power. The "present we" provides only an indispensable factual context.

The only normative context is freedom. Foucauldian struggles are struggle for freedom. But there can be no definitive alternative because that would involve a thick conception of freedom which is contrary to freedom. Thus freedom remains a normative context in the sense of unending yearning for 'difference', a permanent loath for the present (even if we are bound to factually respect it).

Questioning (Problematisation) [1]

Mark asked in his comments on the previous post the following question:

"If you have the time, though, I am curious as to whether this emphasis on questioning is separate from Foucault's archeology - specifically, the archeological move he wants us to make from documents (which are stable signs) to monuments (which are unstable). Is the type of questioning you outline a part of this archeological process? Can the two be considered apart?"

Here is my attempt at a brief reply. Others are welcome to contribute.

Foucault says with reference to his earlier archaeological work:

"If . . . I had wanted to write the history of psychiatric institutions in Europe between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, I'd certainly never have written a book like The History of Madness. But the problem isn't that of humoring the professional historians. Rather, I aim at having an experience myself-by passing through a determinate historical content-an experience of what we are today, of what is not only our past but also our present. And I invite others to share the experience. That is, an experience of our modernity that might permit us to emerge from it transformed. Which means that at the conclusion of the book we can establish new relationship with what was at issue; for instance, madness, its constitution, its history in the modern world"(Remarks on Marx, pp. 33-34 emphasis added).

The 'establishment of this new relationship' is elsewhere described as 'a way of dismantling an object, and of constructing a method of analysis toward that end" (ibid. p. 28). This corresponds to dismantling of and transformation of subject. To the constitution of every object corresponds the constitution of subject. Thus through practices and struggles new subjects and new objects are formed. Through the formation of new object and subject new knowledges are formed. This is how Foucault describes for example the process of the formation of biology. In the process of the formation of biology Foucault contends (referring to Canguilhem) that:

" . . . it was man himself as a living individual who called himself into question in this experience.
By means of the establishment of the biological sciences, man, while establishing a certain kind of knowledge (savoir), was also changing himself as a living individual. Owing to the fact that he was able to operate on himself, change his own conditions of life and his life itself, man was constructing a biology that was nothing other than the reciprocal form of the attempt of the life sciences to encompass the general history of the species" (ibid. p. 68).

Practices and struggles are what create and establish new knowledges, new relations, new institutions. These new knowledges are what Foucault calls subjugated knowledges. These knowledges arise out of concrete practices and struggles that defy established ways of saying and doing things: "I believe that what this essentially local character of criticism indicates in reality is an autonomous, non centralised kind of theoretical production, one that is to say whose validity is not dependent on the approval of the established regimes of thought" (Power/Knowledge : Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, p. 81).

One of the purposes of earlier Archaeological work of Foucault was to show the historical (and hence ultimately contingent) nature of 'objects' and 'subjects' presupposed by different knowledges. It follows (from their historical nature) that they can be unformed (in principle) as what is formed can always be unformed.

Questioning (Problematisation)

Questioning and permanent questioning is the most important facet of Foucauldian politics. Those who are ruled are entitled to ask how they are being ruled, what are the implications of particular policies for their freedom, well being etc.

Permanent questioning is the way to ensure that 'these games are played with minimum domination'. The justification for questioning does not lie in some (utopian) alternative. The one who questions is not questioning because he has necessarily a better alternative, one questions because of one's commitment to the project of freedom, because one is a questioning animal.

Thus Foucault argues that he has not questioned modern institutions and practices because he has some definitive alternative, he questions institutions and practices and the state because he thinks we are entitled to ask questions about things that affect our freedom from those who rule us in the name of freedom. "I do not think that in regard to madness and mental illness (for example) there is any politics that can contain the just and definitive solution", Foucault says.

On the other hand he argues "that in madness, in derangement, in behaviour problems, there are reasons for questioning politics; and politics must answer these questions, but it never answers them completely" (The Foucault Reader, p. 384). The reason for questioning is what is at stake, and that is the freedom of an animal whose 'essence' is freedom.

Foucault differentiates between the free speech of those who govern and the free speech of those who are governed. Those who are governed are entitled and they "can and must question those who govern them, in the name of knowledge, the experience they have, by virtue of being citizens, of what those who govern do, of the meaning of their actions, of the decisions they have taken" (Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984, pp. 51-52).

In this regard Foucault warns against the trap, which is employed by governors to bar those who are governed by them from asking questions, from questioning their acts:

". . . one must avoid a trap in which those who govern try to catch intellectuals and into which they often fall: put yourselves in our place and tell us what you would do. It is not a question one has to answer. To make a decision on some question implies knowledge of evidence that is refused us, an analysis of the situation that we have not been able to make. This is a trap. Nevertheless, as governed, we have a perfect right to ask questions about the truth: what are you doing, for example, when you are hostile to Euromissiles, or when, on the contrary, you support them, when you restructure the Lorraine steel industry, when you open up the question of private education" (ibid. p. 52).

In this sense questioning aims at permanent problematisation of those elements in the present that constitute the present threat to the freedom of the governed.

Emergence of Medical Markets and Noso Politics

Foucault writes the following about the emergence of medical market in the nineteenth century:

“The development of a medical market in the form of private clienteles, the extension of a network of personnel offering qualified medical attention, the growth of individual and family demand for health care, the emergence of a clinical medicine strongly centred on individual examination, diagnosis and therapy, the explicitly moral and scientific – and secretly economic – exaltation of ‘private consultation’, in short the progressive emplacement of what was to become the great medical edifice of the nineteenth century, cannot be divorced from the concurrent organisation of a politics of health, the consideration of disease as a political and economic problem for social collectivities which they must seek to resolve as a matter of overall policy. ‘Private’ and ‘socialised’ medicine, in their reciprocal support and opposition, both derive from a common global strategy . . . ." (Power Knowledge,pp. 166-167 emphasis added).

Thus the emergence of the ‘medical market’ is not seen as the outcome of some quasi natural evolution but of noso politics. And this noso politics is not just centred on state apparatus but in the whole apparatus of accumulation of men:

"Thus the eighteenth-century problematisation of noso-politics does not correlate with a uniform trend of State intervention in the practice of medicine, but rather with the emergence at a multitude of sites in the social body of health and disease as problems requiring some form or other of collective control measures. Rather than being the product of a vertical initiative coming from above, noso-politics in the eighteenth century figures as problem with a number of origins and orientations, being the problem of the health of all as a priority for all, the state of health of a population as a general objective of policy” (ibid. pp. 167-168).

The regime of accumulation of men in general provided the condition for the emergence and development of Market as the arena of accumulation in general. People needed to be disciplined in order to be made eligible for acquiring the formal rights necessary for the functioning of markets. Thus before entering the Market arena individuals and populations were disciplined by political forces. Market disciplines were preceded by and conditioned upon non Market disciplines, “the worker was to be ‘freed’ to the extent that the enforcement of punitive sanctions against gambling, vagrancy and the like would preclude all means of subsistence other than waged labour, and (the) worker was to be individualised through law against unionisation and collective action. Once constructed and generalised, the dull compulsion of labour market would combine with the disciplinary organisation of time, space and activity in the factory, mill and mine to produce the forms of life and mode of individuality in which docile and utilisable labour would present itself at the work place of its own free will” (Nicholas Rose (1993) Towards a Critical Sociology of Freedom Inaugural Lecture delivered on 5 May 1992 at Goldsmith College University of London Goldsmiths College Occasional Paper, p. 6).

Thus one goes through two types of disciplines (first outside the work place) and then at the work place to attain the kind of freedom that is the hallmark of Market.

Similarly the actually existing (particular) markers are preceded by and conditioned by the actually existing (particular) regimes of accumulation of men with the proviso that a reciprocal relation exists on this level in the sense that development in one arena can be extrapolated onto the other and crises in one domain can lead to crises or reform or development of new techniques in the other domain.

The ‘general politics’ of truth (1)

In capitalist societies, according to Foucault “the ‘political economy’ of truth is characterised by five important traits”:

“Truth” is centred on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it; it is subject to constant economic and political incitement (the demand for truth, as much for economic production as for political power); it is the object, under diverse forms, of immense diffusion and consumption (circulating through apparatuses of education and information whose extent is relatively broad in the social body, notwithstanding certain strict limitations); it is produced and transmitted under the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few great political and economic apparatuses (university, army, writing, media); lastly, it is the issue of a whole political debate and social confrontation (“ideological” struggles)[The Foucault Reader, p. 73].

Foucault adds three further ‘propositions’ (which he asks to be treated as hypotheses) to the above mentioned five characteristics of the truth regime in capitalist order:

“ ‘Truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements. ‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extends it. A “regime” of truth.
This regime is not merely ideological or superstructural; it was a condition of the formation and development of capitalism”(ibid. p. 74).

From these characterisations of the capitalist truth regime we can glean the following propositions which can help us ground our initial formulations.

 Capitalist truth regime identifies and justifies itself as objectivity/scientificity. This objectivity has two immediate functions: (a) it procures normative status for this truth regime. Truth claims become claims not only about what ‘is’ but about what should be. (b) it conceals and constantly camouflages the context of this truth regime. Objectivity camouflages the context of truth regime by conceptualising it as standing outside power relations. These two factors explain the ‘central’ role of the institution of the ‘university’ in capitalist order. It also explains the centrality of ‘experts’ in modern society in the form of bureaucracies and technocracies, which are the essential elements in the functioning of modern capitalism. These bureaucracies and technocracies are spearheaded and (mostly) constituted by the university professors, their students and disciples.

 Although truth is produced within a context, within a regime this regime also requires this ‘truth’ to produce and reproduce and sustain itself. The mechanism for this is twofold (a) constant production, multiplication, diffusion and diversification of truth. This multiplicity should constantly increase, as it is essential to enhance innovation within the system. This innovation is the basis of ‘utility’ maximisation. Truth diversity and diffusion is effected through continuous multiplication, ramification (for example of) of the university into faculties, faculties into departments, ever increasing specialisation etc. The same process applies to other capitalist institutions viz: electronic media, print media etc. This immense process of diffusion, diversification and multiplication is geared to the sustenance of the engines of capitalist innovation and production (b) All multiplicity, diversity must converge back towards a singularity however. The practical aspect of this is the necessity of all diverse and multiple truths to pass through the filter of great capitalist institutions viz; academic journals, expert comments and opinions, learned conferences and above all the institution of the university which is the converging ground of all other institutions, in order to gain objectivity, authenticity, acceptability and hence publicity. The ‘knowledges’ that fail to pass this test are dubbed unscientific, nonobjective, dubious and consequently marginalised and effectively silenced through not allowing them media ‘outlets’ which are under the hegemonic control of the capitalist regime of truth. Through the sole criterion of ability to be streamlined towards the singularity of capital accumulation, warranted truth is separated from the unwarranted truth (cf. Power Knowledge, pp. 78-92).

 This regime of truth is the condition of the “formation” and development of capitalism precisely in the sense that through this regime only that “truth” is produced and reproduced and only that truth is validated that is conducive to capital accumulation and for the production and reproduction of the ethos, society and system that is necessary for the sustenance of the system of capital accumulation.

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The ‘general politics’ of truth

The notion of universal truth is a ‘dangerous’ chimera as it is a tool to impose a singularity in the name of objectivity. It is a chimera because human finitude leaves no room for the transcendence of the sort that carries itself with the notion of objectivity. Truth for Foucault on the other hand is ‘produced’ within discourse and it is meaningless to speak of truth outside discourse: “ . . . the problem does not consist in drawing a line between that in a discourse which falls under the category of scientificity or truth, and that which comes under some other category, but in seeing how historically effects of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false” (The Foucault Reader, p. 60 emphasis added). Thus truth is always an embodied and emended truth. It is embedded in the overall discursive structures and is produced and reproduced through this very embededdness. As Foucault puts it:

“. . . truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude; nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world; it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth; that is, the types of discourses which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enables one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true” (ibid; pp. 72-73).

The ‘general politics’ of truth establishes what would be counted as truth and what as untruth in a society. This ‘general politics’ of truth imposes singularity over the multiple of truths accepted in any society. But what distinguishes the ‘general politics’ of truth in capitalist societies from other societies is its unique blend of diversity and singularity, ‘docility’ and ‘utility’. The same double bind operates here which we saw operating in the subjectivisation regime. On the one hand the requirements of productivity and ‘utility’ entail and demand increasing profusion and diversity of the multiple forms of truths but the requirements of capitalist governance demand that this multiplicity must be retractable to the singularity of capital accumulation. All this diversity and multiplicity must converge back to the single truth which defines all the truths. This single truth is expressed in the rationality of capital accumulation for its own sake and the accumulation of men sustaining never ending capital accumulation.
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